The Saga of the Pod Squad
by Chris Kenworthy
Summary: A broad-strokes picture of what the gang's future SHOULD have been more like after the junior prom.
1. Part One

Title: "The Saga of the Pod Squad." (If anyone has dibs on that title, let me know.)  
  
Author: Chris Kenworthy  
  
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net  
  
Homepage: http://www.fanfiction.net/~chriskenworthy  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]  
  
Synopsis: A broad-strokes picture of what the gang's future SHOULD have been more like after the junior prom. ;)  
  
Author's note: This is something different that I'm trying, so bear with me. Will almost certainly be leaving a lot of blanks to be filled in, but I hope that some of you like the tale.  
  
"It was at a party," Max muttered. He was sitting on a bench in the West Roswell High corridor, not far away from the gymnasium where the junior prom was going on. He had come out here to sulk, and Tess Harding had joined him... to try to cheer him up, or commiserate with him - he wasn't sure which. "Late at night." He sighed. "And you..." He couldn't go any further.  
  
After a long few seconds' pause, Tess shifted slightly, putting her right hand on his back, just as in his memory. "I... I leaned in," she mouthed, with a voice even more choked up than his had been. She WAS leaning, the satin of her blue prom dress touching Max's tuxedo, and somehow that made him feel very uncomfortable. "And-- and whispered in your ear." She bent her head, blonde bangs brushing against his nose ever so lightly, and then backed away.  
  
Max looked up at her, confused, grieved... and reached up a hand towards her head tentatively. He wouldn't have continued the gesture if she didn't nod encouragingly, ever so slightly, His thumb grazed the side of her face, his fingers cupping her jaw as the thumb brushes away an invisible, but wet, fraction of a tear. "...And then you touched my cheek," she finished in a hollow whisper, trembling with feeling.  
  
He stroked her cheek again, looking into her blue eyes, and then their heads were moving towards each other. Were they really going to do this?? "And then we just..." he muttered, and their lips slowly drifted together.  
  
Unseen by both of them, Liz walked around the corner just in time to see the final hesitation, and Max and Tess' lips meet. Disbelieving, she watched as Max tenderly, nervously kissed the girl she hated, backed away in fright, then turned and ran out of the school.  
  
After only a few seconds, Max pulled away. The kiss had been sweet, and precious... and as thin as tissue paper.  
  
"This isn't real, Tess," he forced himself to say out loud.  
  
She looked up at him, those crystal eyes pleading... but also asking. "We're just going through the motions, acting out something that happened a long, long time ago," he said softly. "There isn't any true feeling of love there. It's been an article of faith to you that you loved me since before you met me, and that makes it hollow."  
  
"I knew you for years, on another w..." she started, and Max cut her off,, shifting sideways on the bench away from her.  
  
"You knew *Zan*... or Ava knew Zan. I'm not Zan, and you aren't Ava. They were where we came from... and it's important to know where we came from. But they're not the same as us -- how could they be?? We have new genes... we have a new upbringing. All of that can't help but change us."  
  
"And... and what if I, Tess... fell in love with you, Max -- since I came to Roswell? What if that's completely replaced the crush I had on a guy that I didn't even know??" Tess mumbled back, blushing fiercely.  
  
Max paused, weighing this before he answered. "I'm not sure... I'm not convinced, that it's possible, because I never really let you in, Tess. And... as much as you mean to me as a friend, as part of my extended family... I'm not sure that I *can* let you in."  
  
"Because of Liz??" Tess almost hissed the name.  
  
"No," Max shook his head. "I still love Liz, but I'm going to try to let her go... that's what she wants me to do now. But -- I can't let you into my heart just because you want so badly to be there, Tess." He looked into her eyes, trying to convey what he was saying. "That isn't how love works. You've been trying to get in there... to replace Liz... for so long, I'm not sure if I could ever trust you absolutely. I'm sorry."  
  
Tess opened her mouth for another snarky comeback... but somehow it didn't come. "I understand."  
  
Max stood up and forced a smile. "Wanna go raid the refreshments table??"  
  
"I'll be there in just a second."  
  
And there, in the school hallway, Tess let Max go. Just a little bit. Just to start with. It was the hardest thing that she'd ever done.  
  
************  
  
Alex got out of his car, hurried up the front walk of the Evans house, and knocked on the door. The familiar face of Isabel Evans answered.  
  
"Uh... yeah? What is it -- Whitman??"  
  
"Umm..." This was not what Alex had expected. "You told me to come by and pick you up at a quarter to seven. The big first day of summer party, out at Wilkes point..."  
  
"Oh, oh right..." Iz replied. "Sorry, I've had a last minute change of plans, why don't you go on without me??"  
  
Alex felt his face go pale. "What... what kind of change of plans?"  
  
Isabel grinned in a way that Alex was quite sure he didn't like, though he wasn't sure why. "You know... *alien* stuff. Nothing that you need to go poking your curious head into, though," she disclaimed quickly.  
  
Feeling totally disoriented and rejected, something prompted Alex to make one more try. "Are you going to be able to make it up to the Point later?"  
  
"We'll see, but somehow I doubt it. Now go on with you and have a great time- I've got to get myself ready." She all but shooed him out the door and closed it behind him. Alex stared at the door for more than a minute, and then, with nothing else to do... he got back into his car and drove up to Wilkes point, parking his car on the edge of the growing crowd of vehicles from other partiers.  
  
About an hour later, he was sitting with his back to a tall rock face, about halfway up the peak, nursing a plastic glass of fruit punch morosely. That's where he was when Maria spotted him.  
  
"What, no Isabel?"  
  
"Does it look like she's here??" Alex muttered grumpily.  
  
"What, did she bail on you too?"  
  
Alex nodded by reflex, and then his brain processed the 'too.' "What... did Michael make some flimsy excuse too?"  
  
"Do you SEE him here?" Maria cracked. But Alex didn't smile. "Do you think there's something going on?"  
  
"I dunno, the rest of our merry troupe is all here," Maria reported. "Tess is avoiding Kyle, Max is avoiding Tess, and Liz is avoiding Max."  
  
"Fun," Alex drawled. "You wanna try the bungees??"  
  
"There is no way in Czechoslovakia that you are getting me to jump off a cliff," Maria warned.  
  
"We'll see," Alex said, hiding a smile.  
  
************  
  
"Hey, what are you three looking so sour about??" Tess asked.  
  
Maria and Alex had shared their worries with Liz after a week, and she had dropped by to visit Michael and confirmed that he was behaving very strangely, but didn't have any suggestions as to a course of action.  
  
Alex looked around the Crashdown dining room - it was totally empty except for the three of them sitting at the table, and Tess, standing next to it. "We're worried about Michael and Isabel... they've been blowing us off all week and acting really weird." He braced himself for some snarky remark from Tess about the aliens versus humans thing.  
  
But it didn't come. "You know, I think you might be right," she said, sitting down next to Maria (where there wasn't really room to sit, therefore obliging Maria to scoot over and make room for her.) "Spill - wat have you noticed, specifically."  
  
Alex and Maria looked over at Liz, who nodded slightly, so the three of them started to recount the oddities they'd noticed. Three quarters of the way through the list, Tess cut them off completely.  
  
"We may not have much time. I think Max was going with them up to the Maideckizne rocks... we've got to roll!!"  
  
Somewhat uncertainly, they followed her over to the Jetta.  
  
************  
  
Liz peered up the rocky path, and she was pretty sure that she could see three figures up right about where the entrance to the Pod Chamber would be. The time for being cautious had run out. Tess had briefed them all about her suspicions on the long drive out past the Puhlman ranch. "MAX!!!" she yelled out.  
  
"LIZ?? IS THAT YOU??" came the reply from Max.  
  
"YEAH. DON'T GO INSIDE!!" she yelled back.  
  
"UHH... WHY NOT??"  
  
Liz turned around to look at Maria, who shrugged her helplessness at coming up with a decent answer to that question. "I CAN'T TELL YOU!" Vehemently she waved at the others behind her to climb faster, even though she already knew that all four of them were mounting the path as quickly as they possibly could... and probably faster than was advisable, except that these were desperate circumstances.  
  
There was a long pause from up above, and then Michael's voice came down. "WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR GAMES, LIZ. TESS IS THERE WITH YOU, RIGHT??"  
  
Liz shushed Alex from answering... at this stage the longer that they could stall for time, the better. "WELL, IS SHE??" Michael prompted again, and Liz realized that if they didn't answer soon, *they* might convince Max to let them in regardless.  
  
But she waited another fifteen seconds, climbing hard, before stopping and hollering "YES, SHE IS."  
  
"THEN SHE CAN LET YOU IN WHEN YOU GUYS GET HERE, AND WE'LL TALK INSIDE. WE'RE GOING IN NOW."  
  
"MAX..." she called again, and he interrupted her, speaking a little less loudly, since they'd closed a fair bit of the distance by now.  
  
"Liz, I don't understand what's going on," he told her. He was very close to the entrance now, close enough that if... if either of them realized, they could probably slam his palm into the right place. But neither of them were that close to Max - Michael and Isabel were glaring balefully at the party of four still making its way up the rock.  
  
There was nothing for it but to say it straight out now. "They aren't Michael and Isabel, Max!! They're the dupes!!!"  
  
Isabel... no, that really *was* Lonnie -- snarled at them, and Rath charged towards Max... but Max shielded just in time, and Michael bounced almost ludicrously off the rippling wall of green energy.  
  
Lonnie... (she still looked like Isabel -- well, the slightly preppy clothes, the long blonde hair, and undecorated skin, though the expression on her face was most un-Isabel-like...) anyway, she swept a cold hard glance across the four of them, and then hopped down the path a little ways, focusing on Liz. Tess took a step towards Liz and in front of her, shielding Liz from Lonnie's hostility.  
  
Lonnie looked back at Rath and considered. Lacking any convenient opening to take the human kids hostage, (and Tess seemed to be willing to protect them,) they were a loose cannon that would probably work in the favor of their little friends, and against Lonnie's side.  
  
Max was good with his powers, and Nicholas had told her how Tess had mysteriously wiped out the Copper Summit contigent of Skins, with Nick himself only surviving by shielding himself and using a mindwarp of nothingness to cover his escape. So...  
  
She gestured to Rath, and he reluctantly hurried across the little flat space to join her.  
  
Lonnie grabbed Rath's hand and jumped off the side of the rock, a sheer stone face that went straight down for eighty feet before running into some craggy stones that ranged up about seven feet from the desert floor.  
  
Liz gasped in... well, not quite horror -- when she saw the two of them drop off the path. More like shock and surprise, really. She did have enough presence of mind to rush to the side of the path, where she could get a good look down just in time to see...  
  
With about twenty feet to go before landing and making a yucky mess of themselves, the two falling bodies suddenly began to decelerate quite remarkably in midair. At least one of them was using alien power, Liz realized. PUSHING down against the ground or the cliff face in order to fall less quickly - a pretty clever application. Probably Lonnie had thought of it.  
  
Already they had landed on the rocks - not smoothly but probably with no more jar than an ordinary person would get leaping down off a seven-foot fence... and were running for the Jeep, which Max had for some reason parked closer to directly underneath the pod chamber than the beginning of the path up.   
  
Certainly no pursuit could catch up to them before they got to it... well, maybe if either Max or Tess or both imitated the trick of jumping off the cliff, but without practice they would be likely to hurt themselves badly, and Lonnie and Rath STILL had a head start to the wheels.  
  
"What if Rath takes the Jeep, and Lonnie continues on to steal the Jetta??" Alex asked, looking over Liz's shoulder.  
  
"She won't," Tess said hopefully. "They need to get out of here as soon as possible, and she won't be sure that one of us isn't charging right down the path, in which case we'd get to the Jetta at about the same time. Lonnie's trying to avoid a confrontation."  
  
"Maybe some of us should be charging back down the path for real, just in case she's too dumb to be bluffed?" Maria asked.  
  
"No need," Liz pointed out. Sure enough, both of them were getting into the Jeep and driving away. "They probably want to make sure that Michael and Isabel are secure, to keep us from getting the advantage of numbers over them." The thought brought a smile to her face - hopefully when it came to that, the dupes had already been outsmarted.  
  
"What about Michael and Isabel?" Max asked. He was heading down the path towards them, a worried look on his face. "If those two are Lonnie and Rath, where are *my* brother and sister??"  
  
"Hopefully Kyle and mister Valenti are finding that out right now," Maria told him. "We had a notion, and called them to check on it, while leaving Roswell to come here. I'll check on that now," she muttered, pulling out her cell phone. It was one of those weird little coincidences that while there was generally no decent cell phone service out this far into the desert, up here just outside the pod chamber they were high enough and in the right position to get a clear signal from one particular transponder.   
  
"It's ringing," she said after a few seconds, then continued to wait. "No answer," she said after eight rings. "Kyle isn't picking up."  
  
"Try the land line," Tess prompted. "555-1214"  
  
"There's no way the phone's still hooked up there," Alex protested.  
  
"If Lonnie and Rath were using it as a secret base, they may have reactivated the line," Liz realized. "That isn't hard, with your guys' powers, right?" Max nodded slightly, then turned as the expression on Maria's face indicated that someone had picked up.  
  
************  
  
"Damn, Kyle, but it's good to see you!!" were the first words out of Michael's mouth when the gag was removed. "How did you guys find us??"  
  
"Liz called us," Jim Valenti said as he ungagged Isabel and started to untie her.  
  
"It was..." Isabel started.  
  
"It was Rath and Lonnie, your evil twins," Kyle filled in.  
  
Michael turned to Kyle... coughed unexpectedly on a thread from the gag, and stared at the human teenager. "You never even met them... did you??"  
  
"Nah, but Tess was full of horror stories once she got back from New York," Kyle said with a smile. "There's one thing I've been wondering about though."  
  
"And what's that??" Isabel asked. Michael thought he knew what was coming.  
  
"Well... you guys are aliens. You can reshape and transform just about anything into anything that uses the same molecules... right?? You can even unlock doors with a wave of your hand and blast through solid walls with energy blasts if you feel the need, and you can move objects just by thinking about them. So... how was it that they were able to leave you guys tied up down here, unguarded, and you couldn't free yourselves??"  
  
"They were always watching us at the beginning," Isabel explained, with a scowl on her face. "But... there was something in the water they gave us, I think -- it was drugged. Once that kicked in --" She looked over at Michael, who nodded. "Our powers went away."  
  
"Oh," Jim muttered, the implications of this settling in. "So... you're still..."  
  
"Dosed up to the gills and as helpless as a human," Michael confirmed. "Which isn't THAT helpless, but the four of us are going to want to make ourselves scarce before the gruesome twosome get back."  
  
"You... you said that Liz called you," Isabel broke in. "Why didn't she come herself?? Does anybody know what our body snatchers are up to??"  
  
"Everybody's out past Puhlman ranch, your pod cave or whatever," Kyle explained.  
  
"Pod chamber," Michael corrected absently.  
  
"They... and by they I mean Liz, Alex, Maria, and Tess, who we got our information from," Jim began. "They think that Lonnie and Rath were trying to trick Max into letting them into the pod chamber and... and from there getting access to the... the grannelik?"  
  
This time, neither of them corrected him. Isabel didn't feel too comfortable with ANYONE knowing much about the granolith... even Kyle and his father, who had mostly proven that they could be trusted. And even so small a detail as how to pronounce its name correctly. Plus, there was something else she was worried about. "How would Rath and Lonnie have known that the granolith was behind the pod chamber."  
  
"Tess said that they tried to get into her brain, in New York, just before Max found her and took her home," Michael remembered out loud.  
  
"It's just supposition that that's what they were after," Kyle pointed out. "But Tess thought it was a very good idea to keep them out of the pod chamber - especially if they might recognize the granolith and/or know anything that they can do with it."  
  
All of a sudden a telephone rang. Kyle's hand went to his jacket pocket... and a look of confusion crossed his face as he realized that there wasn't a cell phone there. Jim turned his head around as the ringing came, and crossed the basement of Ed Harding's house to pick up a dusty looking black receiver up. "Hello?" He smiled over at the others. "It's Maria."  
  
"Are Max and Tess there with her??" Michael asked immediately, getting up... and almost stumbling again, since his legs were not used to working after so many days of captivity.  
  
Jim nodded at him, and as Michael got close Jim told whoever was on the other end that he was putting Michael on, and handed him the telephone. "Hello?" he said into the mouthpiece.  
  
"Hey, Michael??" Max's voice came a little faintly. "I'm here on the line with Maria, and we're out here on the rock with Tess, Liz, and Alex." Michael smiled as he pictured the two of them putting their heads together to use a tiny little cell phone at the same time. "Everything's fine over here, and it's great to hear your voice. How's Isabel??"  
  
"Probably pretty sore and cranky, just like me, but at least she's untied and de-gagged," Michael reported. "But here's the bad news -- Rath and Lonnie were using some kind of drug on us that suppressed our powers, and it hasn't nearly worn off yet."  
  
There was a gasp from Maria and a pause from Max, as presumably he rapidly attempted to integrate this little fact into his seat-of-the-pants strategy. "Okay, well... the important thing for you guys is to stay safe and well out of THEIR way until you're back at full strength. They only just left here a few minutes ago... in MY Jeep... so you should have plenty of time to make good your getaway. Go somewhere that NO-ONE would think of looking for you."  
  
Michael smiled. "I know just the place. What about you guys??"  
  
There was a little discussion off the phone that he couldn't hear. "Until you and Isabel can report that you're back in action, I was thinking that we'd be guarding the gate over here. We can't afford to risk Lonnie and Rath doubling back and getting in - there's no way of telling if their handprints can open the chamber or not."  
  
Michael thought furiously. A thought occurred to him, but he knew that it would take a long time to explain it and they really needed to get on the move. At that point Kyle made the decision easier by walking into view, carrying his cell phone, which presumably he had gone and found while Michael had been on the regular telephone. "I'll call you back, Maxwell. Maria's cell number, right??"   
  
"Yeah, but..."  
  
"One minute." he replaced the receiver and headed over to where Isabel was still sitting, helping her tactfully to her feet. "We're getting out of here. S D's." Iz frowned a moment, then nodded in recognition. Michael held out his hand for Kyle's cell phone, took it when he pushed it slightly in my direction, and dialled while Isabel gestured for Jim to follow us back up out of the basement.  
  
"Okay, Maxwell," he said as soon as the phone picked up. "I have an idea about securing the pod chamber door without tying up valuable conflict-capable personnel waiting up there."  
  
"Uhh... okay, go ahead," Max answered.   
  
"In the front of the pod chamber, inside 'The Box', there should be two of those little pentagon devices. The... whatsitcalled... tritium resonator or whatever."  
  
"Yeah..." Max agreed. "The one we took from Brody's things at the UFO centre and..."  
  
"And the one that was in Congresswoman Whittaker's office after she died," Michael confirmed. "I want you to go in and get them. One of them can be set with the indicator for the jagged lightning bolt icon. That's the proximity charge setting - it'll go off if anyone alien approaches it. Better have a human being set it off with the rest of you at safe distance... and hide it somewhere very close to the chamber door."  
  
"So... that'll take away Lonnie or Rath's powers if they come near it," Max said. By now they were upstairs, and everyone else seemed to be searching the premises quickly for anything that might be useful - such as information on Rath and Lonnie's plans or the supply of power supression drug. Michael just stood there and concentrated on the conversation with Max.  
  
"More than that. It will shut down the chamber door completely for about four and a half hours," Michael told him, remembering the time that Maria and he had been experimenting with those devices and had gotten themselves sealed inside the pod chamber for a long, terrifying evening. "Using the other pentagon, set on the glyph with the two big dots, the short line, and the curved arc, you should be able to detect if the first one at the pod chamber gets set off - as long as you stay within ninety miles of it or so."  
  
"This is good," Max agreed. "Where should we go once all this is set up??"  
  
I considered. "Probably go to your parents' place. I'll be shutting Kyle's cell phone down so that Rath and Lonnie can't try to call us and track the signal through the cell network, but if everything's all right we'll be checking in with you in..." I looked at my watch, It wasn't there of course; Rath had taken it off before he tied me up. There was a clock on the wall though, and I'd check with one of the others after I hung up the phone. "In two hours??"  
  
"Sounds good. See ya man." And Max hung up.  
  
About ten minutes later the four of them were standing in the hallway of a run-down apartment building, waiting for someone behind the door of unit 18 to answer the knock.  
  
"Hello??" He pulled the door open and looked at the four of them without any apparent interest.  
  
"Hey, I know this is a big imposition, but we really need a place to sit tight for a while where no one's likely to look for us," Michael told him.  
  
Shawn DeLuca shrugged, thought a moment, and then stepped aside, letting them into his new apartment. "Come on in."  
  
TO BE CONTINUED...  
  
Author's note again: Okay, just in case it isn't clear, this fic is hopefully going to be covering a lot of different storylines spread over a matter of years... I've gotten slightly bogged down in the Rath/Lonnie thing at the moment, but don't expect to spend too much more time with them. :) 


	2. Part Two

Title: The Saga of the Pod Squad  
  
Part: 2  
  
Author: Chris Kenworthy  
  
E-mail: kelworth@chriskweb.net  
  
Homepage: http://www.fanfiction.net/~chriskenworthy  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]  
  
Synopsis: A broad-strokes picture of what the gang's future SHOULD have been more like after the junior prom. ;)  
  
Max hurried into his house through the back door, and felt a huge relief to see his mom standing there in the kitchen, chopping up tomatoes. From a large saucepan on the stove he could already smell the aroma of home-made spaghetti sauce... hamburger and more tomato and onion and garlic and oregano and just enough hot peppers to give it the right kick. "Mom!!" he exclaimed in relief, rushing over towards her.  
  
"Uh... yeah honey??" Diane Evans asked with a clear question mark in her voice -- the question probably being what was making him act so strangely.  
  
"Ummm..." Max quickly covered up a little. "Nothing... just that dinner smells delicious. Is Isabel here? Did Michael come by??" Certain that the true answer was no, who Max was really asking after were the sinister dupes, Lonnie and Rath.  
  
"No, haven't seen either of them all day. Do you know if your sister's going to be here for dinner?"  
  
"I doubt it." Okay, that was reassuring on two counts, and Max discretely waved out the window at his compatriots still waiting outside in the driveway, all crammed into the Jetta - well, not too badly crammed now that he was in here. There was no particular reason for them to all wait outside at this point, though for the whole lot of them to come in at once would probably surprise his mom.  
  
Meanwhile, two of his fears had been put to rest, so Max decided to tackle the last one head on. "And Dad??" he asked his mother. "Is he..."  
  
"Got home about ten minutes ago, and he's off playing with those weird moving patterns on his computer," his mother reported. "Maybe you should go in with him, Max... spend a little quality t-- oh, hello there!!" Liz and Tess had just come in. "I didn't realize that you had comp..." A sound distracted all of their attention to the driveway, and Mrs. Evans hurried to the window in time to see the Jetta pulling back out of the driveway. "Ummm... did Maria give you guys a ride? Where's the Jeep, Max?"  
  
"Umm... I lent it to Isabel," he covered, hoping tha that half-truth wouldn't end up causing more problems later. Quickly he pulled Liz aside for a private word. Tess automatically jumped in to divert Max's mother... something about her dad always adding diced pepperoni into spaghetti sauce, which Max found doubtful considering what he knew of Ed Harding, but...  
  
"Maria??" he hissed frantically at Liz.  
  
"She wanted to make sure her Mom was okay," Liz said. "I didn't think it would be a big risk. She'll check in."  
  
Max nodded, and then realized that the phone was ringing. His mother picked it up. "Hello, Evans residence?" A look of surprise crossed her face. "Why yes, she just walked on the door." She held out the phone to Liz. "It's for you."  
  
Liz blinked in utter shock. Who would be calling for her here?? "Who is it??" she managed to mumble out.  
  
"Umm... he didn't give a name... should I..."  
  
Max nodded Liz towards the phone encouragingly. She smiled back slightly and took it, and Max faded back into the rec room and silently picked up another extension. When he got on the line, Liz was asking: "-at is it, Brett??" Brett was a waiter at the crashdown cafe.  
  
"I don't know how to tell you this, but... your parents have been taken prisoner, or something like that."  
  
Liz gasped. "What.... how??"  
  
"It was that kid Michael, and a girl... your exboyfriend's sister, Isamenth. They musta gone off the deep end or something, because they came charging in here with knives. Agnes called the cops."  
  
"She did??" Liz repeated somewhat blankly. Then she pulled herself together noticeably. "Thanks, Brett. By the way -- can you think of anything in particular that Michael and Isabel said while it was happening that seems like it might be relevant?? Anything that was even more out of character than kidnapping my parents with knives?"  
  
"Hmmm..." Pause. "No, can't say that I can think of anything, Leezabella. Wish I could... your old man's been nothing but decent to me, and your mom?? Hh--"  
  
Liz and Max hung up the line simultaneously before Brett could finish his inappropriate outburst.  
  
Liz hurried to join Max in the rec room. "Well, I guess that answers the unpleasant question of what *they* did after finding out that Harding House was empty. Dammit, why'd they have to take it out on MY..." She trailed off in midrant, realizing that she was stepping dangerously close to wishing her misfortune on someone else.  
  
"On your parents?" Max asked softly, taking her hand in his comfortingly. Liz only left it there a moment before taking her own hand back. "I don't know... may have been sheer opportunity, or they may have been trying to make a move that we wouldn't be defending against ahead of time." He sighed, and realized that Tess was standing there. "In any event, I'm pretty sure that your folks are safe, Liz," he told her. "Rath and Lonnie will want to use them as bargaining chips, not to do anything stupid right away."  
  
Right then a cell phone rang, and Max took it out of his pocket - Maria's cell phone, which Max had kept because it was the one that Michael was going to call and check in on. Was it really Michael calling... or one of the dupes, or someone else entirely??  
  
It was Isabel... the real Isabel, Max was quickly able to verify. "Tell me you're starting to get your powers back," he demanded of her.  
  
"No, sorry, not a trace as of yet. Why??"  
  
"We got a report that you and Michael broke into the Crash with knives and kidnapped Liz's parents."  
  
"Oh my god," Isabel breathed. "That's... what do we do now??"  
  
Max sighed. "We wait... as long as we can. I don't want to go up against Rath and Lonnie until we've got more firepower than they do. The gruesome twosome don't seem particularly likely, to me, to try the kidnapping routine more than once, but we'll keep watch on all the usual targets."  
  
************  
  
"Okay," Max said, looking into Isabel's eyes. "Are you sure that you want to do this?"  
  
"Yeah," she nodded.  
  
"Okay." He dropped something on the table between them. "Try to lift this."  
  
Isabel concentrated on the heavy lead weight. After about fifteen seconds, one side of it lifted up... and fell, lifted and fell again. Finally, she managed to get that one side up and keep it up steadily... for about ten seconds, and then it clapped down again. "Whew. That's about all I can do."  
  
"It's still more that most people can lift with their brains alone," Max pointed out. "Okay..." He reached out to take Isabel's hand, but someone knocked on the door before he could.  
  
"It's Lonnie on the line," Michael said, barging in before anyone had answered his knock.  
  
"You handle her, we're busy," Max said. "Ask to talk to Liz's folks; make sure they're being treated right. If Lonnie and Rath hurt them I'll make sure I see them cut apart into tiny little chunks.  
  
Michael considered a moment. "Got it," he said, swinging back out of the room and bringing the phone back up towards his ear again.   
  
Max reached out to touch Isabel's hand and connected with her system. "Try to lift the weight again." Isabel tried, and for a second Max could feel the weight about to take off for the ceilig because of HIS powers, which were available to Isabel because of the connection between them. But that wasn't what Max wanted - he wanted to observe Isabel's system in isolation, so he cut his own power off from her, maintaining the connection only for observation, something that he didn't know he could do before this.  
  
Again only one side of the weight could lift, and only briefly - Isabel had been straining her system before. But Max could see... well no, not see because it wasn't like that. He could FEEL the foreign agents in her bloodstream blocking something in her brain when she tried to use her powers. Inhibiting a neurotransmitter reaction.   
  
"Okay, that's enough." Isabel relazed her effort, and Max tried to get rid of the drug particle, to denature them into something harmless, but there were so many, almost entirely below his threshold of perception, and he wasn't sure how the drug really worked anyway. (He wouldn't want to break it down into something lethal, and he couldn't really control where they DID break... like snapping a small twig in your fingers.) When he had Isabel try her power one more time, there was no noticeable improvement.  
  
Alex showed up next. "I've got something," he told Max. "Might be the edge we need."  
  
************  
  
"Okay, so gos over it for us again," Rath said, grabbing Liz by the shoulder. "How's this gonna works??"  
  
Liz wrenched herself around enough to look back, and make sure that her parents were safe with Tess and Michael now. While she and Kyle on the other hand, were now here with Rath and Lonnie and definitely NOT safe.  
  
"The four of us drive out to the rocks again," Liz told him. "I go up the path to detrigger the trap we set at the entrance to the pod chamber." Lonnie nodded grimly.  
  
"You didn't go back there, did you??" Kyle asked.  
  
"No, but I knew you cornballs woulda done something like that," Lonnie sneered. "Lemme guess - only a nonalien can get close enough to turn it off without it blowing up??" she guessed.  
  
"More or less," Liz said, hoping Kyle would take the hint. If Lonnie and Rath didn't realize the true nature of the Tritium amplifiers, Liz would have a much better chance of carrying out her phase of the (hastily written) plan smoothly. "Once I've defused the bomb, I'll take it back down the path to let you guys know that it's safe to come up." Rath's eyes narrowed suspiciously at that point, but he nodded for her to go on. "We point out the pod squad chamber, you try to use your handprints to open it. If you can't, then we call in Max to do it."  
  
"Not Max," Lonnie countered. "Not with the shield. If we call in someone, we call in Isabel, and she comes in alone. Got it?"  
  
Liz and Kyle exchanged a glance, and nodded. (Hopefully, it wouldn't matter -- Rath and Lonnie shouldn't even really get to that point.) "You go in, take the Granilith and do whatever it is you want to, and you let us go. Agreed??"  
  
Lonnie and Rath exchanged a glance at this point, and both grinned nastily. "Agreed."  
  
Liz had to hide a smile at how badly the dupes were covering the delight in their own planned doublecross.  
  
Liz had to force herself to neither hurry nor dawdle up the path... she didn't want Lonnie or Rath to get impatient, since Kyle would be there for them to take their frustration out on, but neither did she want to be exhausted at the time she'd have to spring their counterattack... and quite possibly fight for her life until help could arrive.  
  
It was simple enough. She found the amplifier where Maria had left it and pressed the tiny, invisible touch-sensitive spot on it that altered the setting to a quiescent one. This, too, would be picked up on the other resonator, and would serve as a cue for their guys to move into position. Then she walked back down the path, and just before reaching Rath, Lonnie, and Kyle... she pressed on a different spot, triggering the Tritium device in an entirely new configuration.  
  
A huge shock wave burst out of the device, passing through Liz's body without any sensation greater than a tingle as it spread out in all directions. But Lonnie and Rath were knocked back and away from Liz as if they had been hit by Mac trucks, while Kyle also seemed to be unaffected. Liz quickly ducked away behind an unlikely boulder, while Kyle scrambled up onto a rock from which he felt he would be able to defend himself.  
  
It's a good thing that they felt confident in their powers and their knives to keep us from causing trouble, Kyle thought to himself as he watched the two clones pick themselves up... murder in their eyes. Might have been a smart idea for them to handcuff me... even just tie my wrists together behind my back. Kyle sighed slightly in relief when Rath pointed a palm up at him and concentrated... to no effect at all. Michael had told them that the setting Liz was to use would hurt the clones and supress their powers temporarily... long enough, hopefully, for the cavalry to come charging in.  
  
Furious with the failure of his purely alien assault, Rath brought his switchblade back out and charged to the base of Kyle's rock. He started to climb up the same way the Kyle had... and then dropped to the ground when he realized how easy it would be for Kyle to stomp down on his head if it got much higher. Kyle chuckled hollowly, but didn't let down his guard... the dumb brute would figure out some other way. He just hoped that Liz would be able to keep herself hidden until Max arrived.  
  
"Find the girl," Lonnie snapped at Rath, thumbing the switch on her own knife so that the blade glinted dangerously in the desert sunlight. "I'll handle this reject."  
  
Oh-kay.  
  
Kyle stood warily, watching the hybrid young woman, wishing he'd had an opportunity to pick up some Shao-lin kung fu or something of the sort. Ah well. The path he was on was his reality, and he'd just have to trust in the cosmos that that would prove enough.  
  
Lonnie climbed up onto another boulder nearby... a nice big one with a wide flat top that seemed to point towards his own perch. Suddenly Kyle realized what she was up to, and tried to evalute his options as Lonnie stood up and took her place for a running jump. Should he dive aside, off the rock?? No, if he ran, she'd just follow him. If he stayed there, he might be able to deflect her leap, knock HER down, and then there wouldn't be much she could do but try again.  
  
As Lonnie sailed through the air between them, Kyle tried to shove her aside and onward, but she slashed viciously at him, and he flinched away slightly by instinct, and then she was there... crouched on the corner of his high ground, but definitely THERE, and obviously not intending to be moved easily.  
  
Kyle tried a punch to the side of her head, and it connected hard, but Lonnie just answered with a swinging leg sweep. As Kyle's feet were seemingly pulled toward and to the side from under him, he had to catch hiself with his hands in an awkward crab position to keep the small of his back from smashing itself into a rocky projection. Lonnie scuttled over his body, looking for an opportunity to drive her blade home. Kyle grabbed her arms and pushed up, flipping both of them over so that he was pinning Lonnie against the boulder, but Lonnie just reacted by using the new leverage to butt her forehead into Kyle's nose. In the crashing pain, he felt his grip loosen, and Lonnie wrench her knife arm away.  
  
"Drop it!!" Both of them looked over to see Kyle's father standing there, pointing an automatic pistol at Lonnie. Tess and Isabel stood beside him.  
  
Outraged, Lonnie waved her knife hand vaguely at Jim... and the cruel grin returned to her face when she realized that the gun had flown violently out of his hands. Snarling, she turned back to Kyle, determined to finish him off the old-fashined way no matter what else happened.  
  
She didn't quite have time. The switchblade drew blood in Kyle's chest but Lonnie's fingers lost their grip and dropped it penetrated anything crucial, he somehow realized. Lonnie was staring down at him... at the knife she had just dropped... and with a final effort brought her hand up to touch the object that had penetrated her skull... a seven-inch long stainless steel nail file. And then she collapsed on top of him, and almost instantly Lonnie's body began to disintegrate into fine white dust. Everyone turned to look at the person responsible for launching that nail file with such deadly velocity... Lonnie's opposite number, Isabel.  
  
"Whh..." Kyle's voice broke from the tension, and he had to clear his throat and start again. "What about Liz??"  
  
************  
  
Max and Michael were facing off a desperate Rath, who was holding his knife to Liz's neck. "Come on, Rath, don't do anything stupid," Max warned. "Let Liz go, and we'll... we'll let you go. Fair trade, the way I look at it."  
  
"Yeah, right," Rath spit. "Da way youz said you wuz gonna give us da Granilith, in exchange for her parents, and den for her and de other human kid. Youz wuz just WAITIN' for a chance to screw us over!! No way I'm gonna give you whutcha want this..."  
  
All of a sudden things started to happen. Rath's knife flex away, propelled by a burst of force from Michael, and Max rushed forward to try to effect Liz's rescue as soon as he realized that he had an opportunity. But Rath was realizing what was happening at the same time, and he clapped his right hand to Liz's neck in a commanding grasp, and waved his left hand out. A small rock near Max, sitting on the desert floor, exploded in a tiny hail of stony shrapnel.  
  
"Nicely done," Rath spat. "Youz woulda had me by now, 'cept that I've got my powers back now from that surge overload." He turned to look at Max warningly. "Now, yous is probably figgering that you's close enough to touch me and connect wit' me... squeeze my heart valves closed, or my brain arteries. But just think about this: I'm right here, and I can connect with your dear darling in as much time as it takes to think about it. If I can't kill her before you get to me, I can do something so bad that yous and she would wish I had. Don't think I can't."  
  
Max waited a moment, staying perfectly still. "Okay. Then what do you want?"  
  
Rath frowned. "Gimme a minute, alls right??"  
  
Suddenly a car door slammed, and Max dived forward, terrified that Rath would panic with this new development. It was only a split instant before he was touching Rath's hand, and connecting. Instinct was in full control.  
  
"FREEZE! *POLICE*!!" Max looked 'into' Rath's brain, stunned at what he managed to do. Something else occured to him -- something that he'd never even thought he was capable of before, but the same instinct was showing him how. (A detatched portion of Max's brain noticed that Liz had run away from her attacked and rescuer already, and was crying in Michael's arms with relief. Max did the second thing and disconnected, shoving Rath away and collapsing himself.  
  
"Well, not to say that I didn't believe Mister Parker, but that's something else," Sheriff Hanson was saying, looking at Michael and the unconscious Rath. "You really do look like Xerox copies. Any notion where your identical twin came from, Mister Guerin??"  
  
"Um... not really, except that he said something about New York," Michael mumbled, his brain racing. Liz's parents had called the sheriff in?? And just what would Rath have to say to the cops? Could Hanson even hold him? Rath had gotten his powers back, and he seemed good at using them to protect his own ass - and without the slightest consideration for human beings.  
  
"Well, that's the tatoo there," Hanson said, looking at the side of Rath's neck under his hair - he must have been too sloppy or too vain to get rid of it. Hanson investigated Rath a little bit further, and turned to Michael. "Under the circumstances, I hope you won't object to helping me verify your identity, Mister Guerin?? You may want a little privacy." He nodded at Liz.  
  
In a few moments, Liz was sitting with Kyle and his father and almost all calmed down, Isabel had made sure that Max was alright, and between two rocky outcroppings Hanson had run through a list of Michael's distinguishing characteristics on record, and was satisfied about his and Rath's identities. "So... can I ask what happens to him now?"  
  
"Well, I'm not sure that the Parkers are wild about testifying, and it turns out that this character has a list of outstanding warrants as long as your arm. But I'm pretty certain that he's going away for a long time."  
  
When they got back, Hanson's deputies had secured custody of Rath, who was awake, and the group of them watched the police car drive away. "Max, what are we going to do??" Michael asked.  
  
"I'm not sure we need to do anything, Michael," Max mumbled. Before Michael could interrupt, Max continued. "I don't think I could do it again, but I've taken his powers away for good and scrambled his memories. Didn't plan it this way, but somehow I think Rath's going to be paying his dues to society... and not causing US any more trouble."  
  
Michael blinked in shock. "You took away his powers for good? How??"  
  
"I'm not really sure," Max admitted. "I just... I connected to Isabel earlier and tried to help her regain her powers, right?? I couldn't really do much with that, but somehow I could do the same things that the drugs did, directly to Rath's brain. And that means it's permanent... it's not a chemical that can fade from his system, and brain tissue never really heals completely." He looked at his hand in shock, realizing the horrible power that had been brought to bear through it.  
  
"Well... I guess that's better than having to kill him," Michael pointed out. "I'm just glad Alex found that antidote to the drug in time."  
  
**********  
  
(March 9th 2002)  
  
Alex Whitman's birthday party was in full swing... a small gathering, mostly of the usual suspects in the club, but highly spirited nonetheless.  
  
Any wishes the birthday boy might have had in mind were blown out of the park when Isabel whispered her birthday surprise for him... later on, when they coulld find somewhere to be alone, she'd enact a reversal of Alex's own performance (or attempted performance) at her surprise party over a year and a half before.  
  
Maria and Michael were slow dancing all by themselves. Tess and Kyle were watching 'Ocean's Eleven' on the super widescreen DVD player that Alex's parents had rented for the party.  
  
Liz came up to Max as he started on his second helping of the birthday cake. "Listen, Max -- there's something that I have to tell you."  
  
Something about the way she put that let Max know he wouldn't like it. "We can do it another time, if you like. I just thought... I mean, we hardly even see each other any more, so... but I didn't mean to ruin the party for you."  
  
"Might as well get into it now," Max said. He wouldn't be able to enjoy the party with the secret hanging over him after all. "What is it?"  
  
"I'm going to Chicago... for university, next year," Liz blurted out awkwardly. "They offered a free ride - I've confirmed."  
  
"That... that's great," Max forced himself to say, wondering why the news was hitting him like a freight train. They hadn't been boyfriend and girlfriend for a long time, true, and they didn't hang out particularly often lately, but Liz had been exaggerating when she implied that they hardly ever saw each other... there wasn't a week that went by that he didn't spend a little time with her in some way or another. And he couldn't grasp the notion of her being thirteen hundred miles away. (Yes, he'd checked in an atlas when she'd first mentioned Northwestern.)  
  
"I hope that you love it there."  
  
"Goddammit Max!!" The expostulation apparently startled Liz as much as Max from the look on her face, but she continued on. "If we have nothing else left, why can't we at least be honest with each other??"  
  
"Do we really want to be, Liz??" Max asked. "I could say that I don't want you to leave, that I don't understand why you don't want to be with me, that I'm still as muc in love with you as I ever was. That's all the truth... does saying it make anything any easier??" He waited a long moment, with everyone staring at them, Liz overwhelmed and clearly fighting back tears. "I didn't think so." He turned around and stormed out.  
  
TO BE CONTINUED... 


	3. Part Three

Title: The Saga of the Pod Squad  
Part: 3  
Author: Chris Kenworthy  
E-mail: kelworthchriskweb.net  
Homepage: PG-13  
Disclaimer: I have no rights over the characters and situations of Roswell, this is a not-for-profit creative outlet so please don't sue me. :]  
Synopsis: A broad-strokes picture of what the gang's future SHOULD have been more like after the junior prom. ;)  
  
"Okay, here's the last of the tops," Maria said, holding out a small overnight bag and tossing it into the back of Liz's father's station wagon, which was already crammed with everything she owned, just about. The worst thing was, all of it didn't really seem to take up very much space.  
  
"You sure the CDs and books are all in here??" Liz asked, a little doubtfully. One of the things that upset her was that if she couldn't find enough stuff to fill up the back seat, her mom might insist on coming along on the road trip to Illinois. It was getting towards the last week of August, and orientation would be starting at Northwestern before too long.  
  
"If they aren't, they're nowhere else," Maria told her. "Plus, if you look hard, you'll see that the boxes of books are forming the bottom layer of the port column and most of the central column of the cargo area, and we have compact discs piled on top here, and off here on the starboard stern, and of course the passenger's side back seat." Liz giggled a bit at Maria using nautical terms to describe parts of the car, though she supposed it made sense -- terms like left and right were relative to which direction you were facing, which was why 'port' and 'starboard' had been invented in the first place, to turn them into absolutes. (As far as the vessel itself was concerned, of course.)  
  
"There has to be something that I'm forgetting," Liz insisted, frowning slightly.  
  
"Maybe to tell Max the truth before you leave town??" Maria suggested probingly. It was hardly the first time she'd made such a suggestion, but Liz suddenly realized that if she didn't respond to it seriously, the trip might get very frustrating for her. Suddenly she made an imperative gesture, waving Maria into the car behind the driver's seat. Once Maria opened the car door, she followed, taking the front passenger position, and made sure that both doors were closed before continuing.  
  
"I know that I haven't really discussed this with you lately... no offense, but best friends forever notwithstanding I wasn't sure if it was any of your..." Liz broke off, realizing that not only did that not sound right, it WASN'T right. "I didn't think you'd understand."  
  
"Well, I don't understand a lot of what you tell me," Maria said in a small voice. "Chemistry and the allure of 'The West Wing', to name two subjects at random. It doesn't mean that I don't want to hear what's on your mind."  
  
Liz smiled, truly grateful for the sentiment. "Well, my feelings about Max have been... changing recently. It wasn't something I wanted -- I just kinda woke up one morning and I wasn't a lovesick mess pining away for him any more."  
  
"Well, I'm all for that," Maria confirmed. "Big 'No' on the ining-pay... I was the one who told you that, remember?" She paused for a moment. "But do you still love him, Liz?"  
  
"I -- I'm not sure," Liz had to admit. "He's very dear to me, and always will be... at least I think 'always.'" She sighed. "But it's started to seem to me like it wasn't any one thing that kept Max and I apart... not his future self or Tess or the throne of his planet or even the fact that we're different species... it was the WHOLE situation. We were star crossed lovers, literally, and it was never going to end well." She sighed, noticed Maria about to say something, and blurted out a pre-emptive reply without meaning to. "And I'm not in love with him any more, I'm pretty sure of that; I fell out somewhere along the way, though I'm not sure when." She realized that there was a phrase passing through the shadows of her mind, and paused a moment to chase it down. "'Falling out of love and falling back into life...' where do I remember that from??"  
  
"I'm not sure," Maria said softly. "But if that's the way things are, then I guess you're right: better to leave things be with Max. No sense in stirring up the past." She sighed. "And I'm a little disappointed on your behalf." Liz turned and looked at her best friend in surprise. "I just still remember how MUCH you were in love with Max. Always thought that was going to work out in the end."  
  
"Hmmm..." Liz thought. "Yeah, you're right. But that love brought me so much pain, that..." She couldn't finish the thought... wasn't even sure if it HAD a finish.  
  
They stayed there, in the car, a long moment without speaking. "C'mon," Maria said finally. "Let's go tell your folks that we're about ready to leave." She spotted a single tear on Liz's face, and reminded herself to tell Liz to use the washroom. In about ten minutes the gang would be dropping by with their goodbye presents for Liz.  
  
"Okay, Tess, was it you who put these bowls in the bathrooms?" Isabel called out. There was no answer. Iz put it down and headed off in search of the other hybrid girl.  
  
She found Tess, along with Maria, trying to heft a large desk up the last few steps to the landing, and helped out. With all three of them working, the piece of furniture was inside the door of their new place in a few minutes.  
  
"Maybe I shouldn't have told the guys they weren't needed to help us move in," Maria admitted, conceding the obvious. "I'm sorry, but Michael was being so damned smug about it! 'You pretty little ladies need a few big strong men to do the heavy lifting for you, huh?'" she mimicked in a passable imitation of Michael at his most condescending.  
  
"Heck, girl, you were right," Isabel agreed. "Who needs guys?" With a small nod to Tess, Isabel concentrated, and the desk lifter into mid air and cruised down the hall, floating into a room and gently settling against the far wall.  
  
Maria looked as if she didn't know whether to rub her eyes or scream. "And the reason you girls couldn't do that to lift it up the stairs was..."  
  
"What else?" Tess replied with a small sigh. "Too much chance that someone walked around a corner and spotted it. We probably shouldn't even be doing it here in the apartment, but I'm too tired to care right now."  
  
The three of them had all enrolled at Eastern New Mexico U, the only college within three hundred miles of Roswell, and Maria and Isabel has realized that working together might be the best way to find an off-campus apartment and move out of their parents' houses. Tess had been looking for somewhere new to stay in Roswell after Jim Valenti left for a new job in Albuquerque, (an established private investigation firm had made him a very generous employment offer,)  
  
Isabel repeated her question about the bowls in the bathroom. "Oh, those are mine," Maria replied. "Solosys crystals... to purify the spirit and give you energy. I've found that they seem to work best right after I've finished showering."  
  
"They stink," Isabel opined concisely.  
  
Tess just looked back and forth from one to the other, and somehow the message was clear. The three of them had to find some precedent for sorting out little clashes like this, or they'd drive each other crazy before christmas exams. "Try them in one bathroom for a week??" Maria suggested, and Isabel nodded.  
  
"Yeah, Max just got back from Los Angeles yesterday," Isabel said to Alex. They were up in Frazier woods, sitting and watching the stars from the very same rock that they had used on the father's camping weekend, nearly three years before. It was their special spot now. "Not that much too it, the way he tells it."  
  
"I don't really see why he felt he had to take off and drive to California as soon as he heard about this Langley guy," Alex commented.  
  
"Think it's because he's so worried about Ava. She was supposed to check in months ago... it's like she disappeared off the face of the planet." After the nearly disastrous incident with Lonnie and Rath, Liz, Max, and Isabel had worked together to track down Ava, the last surviving clone, and make sure that she was okay. She'd been calling Max regularly every few weeks, up until early October, and now it was nearly New Year's. "But Kal said that he didn't know anything about her... considering that he was originally their guardian, he didn't even seem to care. Max said that he seemed more curious about us."  
  
"And... what was this stuff about not being able to hurt Max? Biologically able??"  
  
"It... Max said that it was encoded into his genes somehow, though I don't really get how," Isabel repeated. "Not only couldn't he hurt Max, he had to obey a direct order, though he hated it. I have to say, I'm not sure I blame him... I'd resent something like that if it were done to me."  
  
"Sounds like Max was probably wise to head home when he did," Alex agreed. "Even if the tiger's in a cage, there's no good point in making him mad."  
  
"Well, I think that's enough about Max," Isabel said, and proceeded to demonstrate the point very thoroughly. "Oh Alex, I missed you so much," she whispered huskily when they came back up for air.  
  
"Maybe I should transfer back to Roswell," Alex suggested.  
  
"No, no," Isabel insisted stoically. "Alamogordo is such a great school, and you're loving it, don't deny that you are. And we're only four hours drive away... it's not like that's so far, really." She kissed him again. "We're just going to have to make more of an effort to visit each other regularly."  
  
"I guess I can't argue with that," Alex said with a grin.  
  
"Oh, speaking of transfers, Max might be leaving," Isabel said. "Mom and dad have noticed how depressed he's been lately, and Dad wants to send him to this fancy private university up in Santa Fe. Saint Johns. He's thinking about it... they might be right that a change of scenery will do him good."  
  
"Hmmm," Alex thought. That would leave, of the original gang, only the three sisters of Upsilon Phi Omega in Roswell... (that was an in-joke about the loft apartment that Isabel and the others were sharing... you had to know that Phi was the closest greek equivalent to a letter F to see the hidden meaning of the name of their pretend sorority...) And of course... "How's Michael doing?"  
  
"Struggling a little, but I think he really loves being the working guy." Michael also had gotten a job offer, security shift manager at the electronics plant not far outside town, and it had been an easy decision for him to take... especially since his high school grades weren't exactly the ones that even mediocre colleges liked. "And Maria is shocked that he's actually started paying for things." Alex laughed.  
  
"And then there's Tess," Isabel continued. "She goes to her classes and hangs around the apartment with us, and she seems fine. Excited, happy. And then, like the flick of a switch..."  
  
"Not so much??"  
  
"Yeah. She..." Isabel struggled for words to describe. "I think she's lonely in a way that being with us can't do anything about. Tess loved Kyle like a brother -- and now he's gone. He hasn't been back to Roswell all term. And Max... I don't think he's looked in her direction since Liz told him she was going to Chicago." Isabel sighed. "He blames Tess for the fact that Liz moved on, and that's killing her."  
  
Alex sighed... he certainly didn't have any answer to that problem. Unless... "I realize this may sound stupid, but... well, maybe it would help her to make a new connection. With... well, y'know--"  
  
"With a guy?" Isabel finished. "Believe me, we've been trying to set her up. Maria and I, that is. Considering that she always seems to get worse when it hits her that both of us have boyfriends... but she never really lets anyone in. I don't know if it's because they're human, but we don't really have any other alternatives available, you know what I mean??"  
  
Alex laughed softly. "Yeah, I think I do. Well, when Tess is ready, she'll find someone... I'd hope." He brushed a lock of hair away and kissed Isabel's air, and then something caught his attention. "Hey, is that the Trifid Nebulae??"  
  
Isabel looked. as Alex scrabbled for a skywatching guidebook, and she quietly made the print fluoresce so that he could read it without turning on a light that would block out the stars and force their eyes to readjust. "Is Trifid in saggitarius?"  
  
"Yeah, I think so," Alex agreed. "Yep, here it is. Messier number twenty, emission/reflection nebula."  
  
"It's beautiful," Isabel breathed, staring out at the soft red patch in the sky.  
  
"So far away," Alex whispered.  
  
A thought struck Isabel, and she leaned over to check her facts in Alex's book. "Less than six light years. As interstellar distances go, that's practically 'right down the street.'"  
  
"Hey, Parker!" Liz looked up from her burger, (among other things,) to see Casey Richards sitting down at the table next to hers in the small campus coffeeshop.  
  
"Hi there." She gave him a small wave, just to be polite. Casey was in two of her biology classes this term, (first semester of sophomore year,) as well as the course she had taken for her physics requirement. He was fairly tall, stylish, witty and outspoken during discussion sessions, with wavy blonde hair. For a few weeks now, Liz had felt something about him rub her the wrong way, though she hadn't been sure exactly what. She didn't seem to feel it now -- but after a few moments she went back to her book and brought a forkful of rice up to her mouth.  
  
"The Predation questions??" Casey's voice probed at her. Liz looked up and had to force herself to restrain a scathing reply... since her mouth was full of food that she didn't really want to spray all over the place. Casey might have mistaken her annoyed expression for shock, because he continued. "Saw you had your nose in the ecology reader, and I guess I figured you were already doing reading for the discussion questions about predators, prey, and predation." He sighed slightly. "You don't have to keep hitting the books quite SO hard just to make sure you stay at the top of the class, Parker."  
  
By this time, Liz had swallowed, and took the brief opportunity to get a word in edgewise. "If you must know, I was taking a look at the feature study on community competition." She allowed her eyes to take on something of an angry glare... at least, she hoped that was what they were doing. "I'm not some grade-grubbing brown-noser. I just happen to really like this stuff."  
  
"You're a little bit of a grade grubber," Casey corrected her. Before Liz could vehemently object, he continued. "You're a scholarship student from way out of state, so you kinduv have to be a bit of a grade grubber."  
  
He had a point there... slightly. "I try not to let myself think about it."  
  
He nodded, and changed the subject without a second's pause. "Have you been keeping up with Doctor Ebelin's work with the burrow cats?? In Argentina?"  
  
Liz shook her head, mystified. "Never even heard of them."  
  
"Oh, it's amazing stuff!" Suddenly animated, Casey swung his chair around so that it was halfway to her table. "She discovered this entire new species of felines... digging and tunnelling wild felines, not much bigger than house cats, living in the Andes foothills. I've seen the pictures -- cute little guys when they're sitting around posing for the camera... pretty vicious when they've spotted anything big enough to eat and small enough to catch." He sighed. "There aren't many of them, of course, and despite everything the professor is doing to raise awareness they seem to be more in danger of extinction with every passing month." Just why is he here, sitting at the tables without any food or drink, Liz couldn't help but ask herself.  
  
As Liz finished her lunch, she continued to talk with the keen young man -- their mutual interest in the sciences provided several topics of conversation right off the cuff. And as they chatted, Liz suddenly got a realization of what it was that had startled her about Casey Richards when she had first met him... something that was completely different from what she had expected.  
  
Suddenly a beeping rang out. Casey checked his pocket watch, but it was actually Liz's trusty palmpilot that was sounding the alarm. "Sorry... I've got an hour booked in the lab with one of the genetic simulator computers, and I don't want to waste it," she said, hurriedly packing up her belongings and throwing out the small portion of lunch she hadn't gotten to yet.  
  
"Oh, no, I totally understand," Casey allowed. "I've got my booking for... is it next week or the week after that?? Maybe the weekend in between." He shrugged the question off. "Make the most of your time."  
  
"Okay," Liz said, and checked her watch. Even allowing for a possible delay on the way to the biosciences building, she had thirty seconds to spare. "Case... do you want to grab dinner some time??"  
  
Casey blinked in surprise... and then smiled, a trifle shyly. "Yeah, that'd be all right," he mumbled with an understating nod.  
  
"Okay... you know my ee-maiil," she called out as she rushed away.  
  
As thunder rumbled faraway and the rain poured down on Roswell New Mexico, a dark green sedan pulled up outside the south doors of ENMU's fine arts building. After peering out at the raincoat-clad figure still waiting under the shelter of the small sunroof that extended out just above the doors, the driver groaned and leaned way over to open up the passenger door a few inches. The figure, hard to make out in the dim light and through the rain, lifted up one hand palm out in a 'wait a moment' gesture. Michael closed the door again and arranged himself once more behind the steering wheel.  
  
About a minute and a half later, the drumming of the rain on the windshield seemed to slacken slightly, and when he turned to look that someone was rushing towards the car and letting herself in on the passenger's side. "Sorry about that," Maria DeLuca muttered, sweeping the hood of the coat back from hanging over her face once she was safely inside the car.  
  
"Me too," Michael said quickly. "I'm really, really sorry that..."  
  
"It's okay," Maria insisted, buckling herself up, and Michael put the car back into gear and drove off. "You were only... what, fifteen minutes late coming to pick me up? And the weather isn't exactly great for driving," she allowed tolerantly.  
  
"Yeah, but that wasn't what slowed me down, really," Michael admitted. "I just couldn't find... well, find my fancy pants." Maria snickered goodnaturedly.  
  
"Looks like you found them eventually," she said, reaching out a hand, (carefully dried from the rain,) to brush softly against his right leg, as if to reassure her that the fabric was indeed the fine italisn wool that she had helped pick out... and unable to not be aware of the smoothly muscled flesh of his leg underneath.  
  
"Yeah," Michael agreed, breathing a small sigh of bittersweet relief and renewed attention to driviness when Maria took her hand back. "You look pretty smashing yourself... did anyone comment on the fact that you were all dressed up for the tutorial session??"  
  
"A few people commented," she allowed, "and I used the excuse to brag to everyone within earshot how my boyfriend, the bigshot working man, was taking me to a fancy dress party for his company's twelfth anniversary."  
  
"Yeah, like it's really going to be that cool," Michael sighed. "Man, I wish that we could both just blow this thing off." He looked sidelong in Maria's direction under the pretext of glancing at a road sign. "We could go back to my place... pop some corn, put some good music on the stereo." His voice was softly persuasive. "I bet you're feeling a little stressed - I could give you a foot massage... and then help you take that tight little dress off." He shot a flirtatious glance over towards her openly now.  
  
"Michael!!" she screeched in delighted indignation. "No, come on... we HAVE to go. We've been over this, it's a good opportunity for you to network, make some contacts, impress the big boys. Right??"  
  
Michael sighed. "You impress them for me," he said, only half joking. "You're better at it than I am."  
  
"Hmmm... well, just maybe." She winked over at him. "But then you'd owe me, and I'd have to take it out in trade, wouldn't I??"  
  
"Morning, darling." The words woke Liz Parker up gently, and she froze in shock for an instant, as she had many times over the past few weeks, unable to quite believe that she hadn't been sleeping alone.  
  
Not that she felt she was doing anything WRONG, of course. Although it had only been a little over a year now that she'd been dating Casey... (a year and twenty-seven days now, not too hard to keep track under the circumstances,) Liz had realized after only three weeks that she was falling very deeply in love with him. She hadn't believed, up until that very moment of epiphany, that she could ever fall in love again.  
  
With anyone other than Max Evans, that was...  
  
Casey seemed to feel the same way, and the two of them had quickly become inseparable. She had drawn the line fairly conservatively on physical intimacy, and even that hadn't fazed him, though he did see fit to tease her about the subject good-naturedly. But when Casey had asked her to marry him on their one-year anniversary, she hadn't been able to restrain herself, or him, any longer, and...  
  
"Are you getting up??" Case asked. He had already stood out of bed and was slipping on a T-shirt. "Got lots to do this morning."  
  
"Yeah," Liz agreed, taking just a moment to admire the sleek lines of his physique before struggling out of bed. The cordless handset, sitting on her dresser, was blinking with a red light on a one second interval. "There's a message... did you hear the phone ring??"  
  
Casey looked across the bed at her, and when he didn't answer the question Liz realized with a pleased sensation that he was admiring the view as much as she had - she was wearing a bra and tap pants, her habit for sleeping in. "Umm... yeah, actually I did. Didn't feel like getting up for it though." He looked at the clock. "Might have been someone from out west, come to think of it - we both slept pretty late."  
  
Liz nodded and tapped in the voicemail codes. "Hey Liz, it's me Maria..." the familiar voice sang out over the handset. "What's up... I'd have thought you'd be up already, what's going on??"  
  
"Who is it??" Casey asked softly at her.  
  
"Why do you think??" she whispered back. Casey smiled and nodded.  
  
"...can't wait to see my best girlfriend, so you'd better not miss that plane. Oh, and I am NOT going to let you weasel out of telling Max Evans about your new status as an engage woman while you're here for Christmas break. He knows that you've been dating someone all year, but the poor boy is still so crazy about you that he keeps saying it's not serious," Maria rambled.  
  
Liz blinked in surprise. This was the first time she'd heard that!  
  
"I almost blurted out the news to him last night... but you CANNOT duck the issue and drop it in my lap, because it's not my place to tell him the bad news. Okay, let's see, what else is new? Oh, you will NEVER believe this!" Liz sighed... why Maria insisted on telling gossip to her voice mail, over LONG long distance, when they'd be seeing each other in person in about fourteen hours, Liz never knew.   
  
"Guess who's dropping out of university as soon as his winter finals are done, which should be any hour now? Alex Charles Whitman, that's who!! Yep, he got a job offer from this fancy software company, so he'll be able to move back to Roswell and tele-commute, and they included a big honkin' signing bonus. Guess what he's gonna be doing with it? One guess, rhymes with swing. And it's to be given to Isabel. Yep... you aren't going to be the only one who gets asked the big question!!"  
  
"As far as Michael and me... well, no notion that he's going to be saving up for a 'swing' for me anytime soon, but we're doing plenty all right... well, nothing seems to ever change in his job, and as for me... I got an A minus on my business management paper!! Yeah I know, business and music make an odd combination, but you gotta try to pay the bills somehow, am I right?"  
  
"Okay, we'll pick you up at the airport at eleven thirty PM, Roswell time. See you both then!!"  
  
Liz sighed, deleted the message, logged out of voice mail, and hit the END button. Casey was looking at her, standing on the bedroom side of the door to her en suite bathroom, (quite a rare perk for Columbia's residences, but Liz was a star scholarship student and a residence advisor besides,) looking freshly scrubbed. "What did Maria want??"  
  
"What else, to yatter at me for five minutes, share all the latest New Mexico gossip, and right there at the end confirm our airport pickup." Liz grinned. "Okay, what's on the to do list for today??"  
  
"Well, I'm heading up to Northfield to buy those little figurines as a gift for your mother," Casey rhymed off, as Liz slipped into the bathroom herself, took a small box out of a nondescript bag, opened it up, and closed the door almost all the way while she attended to business. "You wanted to drop by Professor Warner's office to pick up your midterm, so that you can pore over it on the plane and study how you can do better than ninety-six percent next time. And to drop by that acquaintance of yours... what's-his-nick, who offered to burn that disc that you think your friend Alex would be interested in."  
  
"Right," Liz agreed, stepping back out of the bathroom after a minute and stealing a kiss. "Have I thanked you for all the trouble you're going to with this trip to see my parents??"  
  
"Hey, that's indicated for purely selfish reasons," he said, brushing a lock of hair back and tickling her ear affectionately. "Your parents are going to be my in-laws... and I want to make a good impression on the occasion of them realizing that little fact." Liz laughed at him.  
  
"Okay, so... we want to be arriving at O'Hare around quarter after two, which means leaving here around twenty to one... how long do you figure for getting the car packed?"  
  
"We're not taking that much luggage," Casey reminded her. "Ten minutes at most."  
  
"Okay, sounds good," Liz replied, with a nod and a smile. The agenda nailed down, she could start to concentrate on what to wear for the day, and began searching through the clothes that hadn't already been packed.  
  
"Oh, I was talking with my parents," Casey mentioned as she started to dress. "They want to throw us an official engagement party sometime, maybe in February, and they were hoping that your parents and some of your friends from down in Roswell would be able to make it."  
  
"Hmmm..." Liz thought about it. "Yeah, I think that could be managed. My parents will probably worry about exactly who's minding the cafe, but my dad was telling me that they've got a new manager who's really working out well."  
  
"Cool. Oh, and... well, I want to disclaim that we weren't making plans without you, just discussing the timing, and they thought that maybe we could schedule the wedding for May or June a year and a half from now, once we're both graduated, and..."  
  
Liz poked her head into the bathroom... and the color drained from her face in an instant. "Might... we might want to consider setting a date a little sooner than that."  
  
"Err... what??" Casey looked up, his running shoes tied, and saw Liz standing there in the basement doorway. He went up behind her, and after a moment cleared his throat. Liz got back out of the way, gesturing inside with one hand.  
  
Sitting on the edge of the sink was the unmistakeable shape of a home pregnancy test. Casey had no idea what the system of interpreting results on the test itself was, but it didn't take a genius to understand what Liz's own reaction was. "We're... you're going to have a baby??"  
  
"Looks kinda that way," she said in a soft tone. "I... I didn't really believe it, just thought it was probably good to check rather than let myself get worked up over a tiny possibility. But... there it is."  
  
"I..." A thousand thoughts were running through his head. "I thought we were being careful."  
  
"Not careful enough," she reminded him. "Oh, my god, what happens now??"  
  
"What do you think?" Casey replied in a mildly incredulous voice. He took Liz by both shoulders and looked at her, waiting a moment for her to make eye contact before continuing. "We're going to get married. Probably in just a few months. We're going to have a baby and I promise you, Elizabeth Sara Parker, that I am going to do WHATEVER I need to do to take care of you, and our child."  
  
Liz beamed, tears starting to brim in her eyes. "Oh, god, Casey... I love you. And thank you." She reached up to brush at Casey's cheek, where a small manly tear was also dripping slowly down.  
  
"All part of the service," he quipped, and then considered a moment. "Are we going to tell your parents when we get to Roswell? Are we going to tell my parents??"  
  
Liz only had to think about that for a second. "No... the mother and father aren't supposed to tell anyone else this early. It's bad luck."  
  
"Really? I never heard that."  
  
Liz nodded in affirmation. "This early on... well, there are a lot of things that could go wrong. I think I heard that the custom of not telling originally started so as a way of sparing loved ones the pain and grief... but it's become a point of superstition and I think we can use all the good luck we can get."  
  
"Yeah. Say, should you really be, you know, flying?? In your condition?"  
  
Liz shook her head at him. "I'm four weeks. There isn't going to be any danger to me or the baby from travelling until a lot further on... that is, in anything short of a rocket ship."  
  
"Sorry!" he chirped. "Just... don't know these things."  
  
"It's alright," she promised. "Now come on, you'd better get going." He kissed her one more time and hurried out of the door.  
  
Liz watched him go, made the bed and tidied up just a little, and then stepped out herself. Someone was waiting right there in the residence corridor, just outside her room. A little twelve-year-old boy with a demented smile.  
  
Nicholas Crawford. But how...  
  
She backtracked instinctively, trying to close the door for what little good it would do her. But he reached out and touched the palm of her hand, and instantly her body was reacting differently. As smoothly and gracefully as if it were her own will behind the motions, she flipped off the light, closed the door, locked it, and walked off very calmly with the pint-sized alien.  
  
Neither of them noticed Casey, who had turned around, realizing that he'd forgotten his keys in the room. Something struck him as odd about the scene playing out between Liz and the little kid, and he followed them at as great a distance as he could manage.  
  
TO BE CONTINUED... 


End file.
